Obama nominates Michele Leonhart as DEA administrator. This is not good.

[jmowreader]

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/618/obama_nominates_michele_leonhart_dea_adminstrator

"The Leonhart nomination is very disappointing, but not surprising," said Bill Piper, national affairs director for the Drug Policy Allliance. "We need to use her confirmation hearing to get her on record as promising to abide by the Obama administration guidelines on medical marijuana enforcement. She may just be someone who goes along to get along, but it would be good to get her on record on whether the DEA is going to continue to waste law enforcement resources going after low-level offenders."

I wonder if Leonhart really hates drugs, or if she's learned the first rule of diplomacy--don't piss off the boss. If she was working for Shrub, she would have known being progressive on drugs is the surest way to get thrown out on yout ass.

If they just reschedule weed from Schedule 1 to Schedule 3, that'll be enough for right now--that will allow it to be prescribed on a nationwide basis. I don't think the Republicans would let it become a recreational drug right now, but they've got no real problem with some seriously harmful medications. (On edit: if they'll allow medicines with super narrow therapeutic indices to be prescribed to the public, they should be okay with a medicine you can't realistically overdose on.)

[concerned1]

1. "spent $123,000 of taxpayer money to charter a private plane for a trip to Colombia"

There is no better candidate?

[donco6]

2. They definitely need to see her stand on medical marijuana.

Has she just been following Bushco orders, or is she going to buck Obama's stand? This is a big issue in Colorado right now. A lab was just raided yesterday.

[crikkett]

3. Wow I didn't know that plants were grown in "labs".

Maybe something else was going on in that lab.

[Flaneur]

4. Yeah, they were testing marijuana for patients and growers.

[Flaneur]

5. Leonhart's relationship with serial perjuring supersnitch Andrew Chambers...

...really need to be addressed by the Senate Judiciary Committee before she is confirmed. DEA paid Chambers $2.2 million for his snitching. Only problem was he got nailed repeatedly for lying on the stand. DEA stonewalled investigations and refused to quit using him. It took an order from AG Janet Reno to make them quit. Leonhart defended him publicly. She was in St. Louis when he was working there. She was Special Agent in Chief in LA when he was working there.

What did Leonhart know about her snitch's proclivity for perjury? And is someone who condones perjury appropriate to head a major law enforcement agency?

...Not to mention her position as LA SAC during the height of the Bush administration medical marijuana raids.